Model Railway Forum

I've been playing about with this for sometime, but never got round to finishing it off - the coach lighting that is. This is a carriage lighting kit from Layouts4U. Once installed, like the new Hornby 4-wheel coaches, you just wave a magnet over the roof and the lights come, do it again and they go off. The kit comes with instructions (very simple), a length of LED's (self-adhesive peel-off backing), a battery holder and battery, some wire and a latching reed switch. You just stick the LED strip to the roof of the carriage having soldered the wires to the reed switch and the battery holder. The reed switch can also be glued to the carriage roof. As this was a brake carriage, I put the battery holder - loose - in the luggage area and put it all back together. Wave a magnet over the roof and the lights come on do it again, and they go off. I have installed a magnet in the tunnel portal where the track exits the fiddle yard - and it works - as the coach leaves the fiddle yard the lights go on, and when it returns they go off.

The only slight draw back, is that you have to create a slot in the top of each compartment divider to allow the fitment of the LED strip - so having possibly spent a bit on a carriage you the have to start butchering it. This particular coach - a Bachmann Bulleid - came from WTD.

This was actually a very simple job, as the body came off of the carriage with no difficulty - if only they were all like that . The kit cost £6 which is not expensive, but if you look on ebay battery holders and latching reed switches are all very cheap, and you could probably make your own for less than six pounds.


IMG_0844 by Barry Clayton, on Flickr

Looks good Barry. The light is a good colour.

Walkingthedog wrote: ↑Sun Jan 24, 2021 5:04 pm Looks good Barry. The light is a good colour.

Yes, for once warm white, was Should look good with some passengers.

The 2.10pm from Wykeham arrives at Manydown.

IMG_0849 by Barry Clayton, on Flickr

USA 0-6-0T on its way back to Southampton Docks.

IMG_0856 by Barry Clayton, on Flickr

Nice. Interesting that on another forum I have been discussing that I have a loco, a Terrier, with the late crest pointing the wrong way and your loco is the same Barry. Lion should face left.

I read somewhere that BR wanted the lion to face forwards on both sides but then couldn’t register the crest as a coat of arms as there were two variations. The result was they chose one direction making it ‘wrong’ on one side.

When you say face left - do you mean it should face the rear of the loco? There are pictures on Google Images with the Lion facing the front of the loco - as is shown in the picture of my loco. I think Steve has just given the explanation.

BR wanted the lions to face forward, left on the left side right on the right side. They wanted to register the crest as a heraldic device with the College of Arms in England. On a coat of arms the lion should always face left so to make it a heraldic device they were told it would need to be changed to face left.
Some locos weren’t changed for years so it depends how accurate you want to be for a specific loco.

I'm not really concerned either way. I could imagine on RMweb this topic could run for months and hundreds of views